


I'll Be Around When You Get Dark

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [21]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Relationship Issues, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 04:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12809451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: It still strikes Bulma as odd that this is her life.  Her, her baby, and her boyfriend





	I'll Be Around When You Get Dark

“Down.  Down.”

Trunks glares at her indignantly and wiggles in her arms.  Bulma shakes her head, not falling for it.  The streets are slick with ice--there is no way she’s letting her two-year-old walk in this weather.

“No, baby,” she says and brushes her lips against his cheek. “Mommy’s gonna carry you.”

He lets out a labored, annoyed screech, but slumps against her shoulder in defeat.  Bulma has no idea where he got this melodramatic streak--it has to be from Vegeta.  He’s the artistic,  _ tortured _ one.  Clearly, he doesn’t get it from her.

She makes a note to bring it up to him since they’re meeting him for lunch.  It’s nice, having him home after the tour, but King Kai is determined to have them work around the clock to “secure their fame,” whatever that means.  They’ve been given the holidays off--even longer than just a week since Turles doesn’t celebrate Christmas--so she has her boy to herself for the entire month of December.

“Bulma?”

She turns to see a dark-haired woman waving to her further down the sidewalk.  As fast as she can on the slick pavement, she makes her way to her.

“It is you!  Hey!”

When she approaches, Bulma recognizes her.  Mai went to her college and was in a few of her classes.  She was older than her by a couple years since Bulma was, by far, the youngest one in the program.

“Hey,” she says.  She shifts Trunks to her other arm to give the other woman a one-armed hug.

Mai pulls back and looks at her.

“Ooh, is this Trunks?  I’ve seen photos of him on Insta but he’s so much cuter in person.”

She waves a hand at him and Trunks makes a grumpy face.  Bulma doesn’t think it’s personal.  He wants to walk and he hates the cold.

“Yep, this is him.  We’re actually on our way to lunch if you want to walk with us.”

Truthfully, she hasn’t seen Mai in a while and she’d like to catch up.  In fact, Mai is indirectly responsible for Trunks’s existence, after all.  She was the one who told Bulma about “the local band” playing at a bar with tickets for cheap when she expressed a desire to do something after being stuck in thesis hell.  If not for that, she probably never would have seen Vegeta again after their brief conversation in that deli.  They never would have dated, she never would have gotten pregnant--for the want of a nail, etc. etc.

“Sure.”

The walk is short and they catch up on this and that, what their classmates are doing.  Bulma’s glad to talk to someone outside of it all.  She’s learned so much “industry lingo” in the past several months that it makes her head spin.  It’s good to get away from that and simply talk about good old mechanical engineering.

The sub shop is moderately crowded but not annoyingly so and she’s glad.  This is her favorite lunch place because it’s frequented enough to stay open without worry but not known enough to be filled with obnoxious hipsters.  The moment they step through the door, Mai grabs her arm.

“Bulma,” she hisses. “Look who’s over there.”

Bulma looks around the deli, trying to see what she’s talking about.  In her search, she sees that Vegeta has already arrived.  He’s sitting at a two-top with his arms crossed and a wrapped sandwich in front of him.

“Who?” she asks.

Mai gestures towards her boyfriend.

“That guy,” she whispers. “Remember that band?  Apetail?  That guy’s their lead singer.”

Bulma rolls her lips in to quell the peal of laughter that’s bubbling up in her throat.  She supposes that Mai didn’t one hundred percent pay attention to  _ all _ of her posts on social media.

“Is he?” she asks, feigning innocence. “Maybe I’ll go over and say hi.”

Mai’s eyes widen.

“Bulma--”

She shifts Trunks in her arms once more and walks over, sure and determined.

“Hey,” she says and leans down to kiss him hello. “You forgot a highchair.  And my order.”

He curls a lip but kisses her back and holds his arms out for Trunks.

“You change what you get every time and they were out of highchairs when I got here.”

She passes their son over and Trunks immediately starts jabbering to him excitedly, splaying his mittened hands on his face.  Vegeta pretends to look annoyed but she sees the warmth in his eyes as he holds him.

“Yeah?” he asks as if he has any idea what Trunks is saying.  For a two-year-old, he has a decent vocabulary but his little tongue can’t quite form all of the words he knows.

Bulma walks to the corner of the deli where a lone highchair sits and brings it over to the table.  She’s about to take Trunks back to put him in when Mai rushes over, confusion evident on her face.

“Um...what’s going on?” she asks.

Bulma smiles sunnily and says, “Oh, right.  I forgot to make introductions.  Mai, this is my boyfriend, Vegeta.  Babe, this is Mai.  We went to college together.”

He looks at her for a moment and hitches his chin in greeting.  Bulma busies herself with taking off Trunks’s winterwear and getting him in the highchair.

“I like your music,” Mai says and then curls a lip at herself in embarrassment. “Anyway.  I’m gonna go order and, uh, it was good to see you and nice to...meet you.”

She scurries off and Bulma feels--well, a bit bad.  She didn’t want to embarrass her, just have a little fun.  She figures she’ll apologize when she gets in line to place her own order.

“Did you get anything for Trunks yet?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know how long you’d be and you know how he gets when food isn’t fresh.”

She nods.  It’s true.  Their toddler will eat anything but only if it’s fresh.  It makes reheating leftovers for him a nightmare.

It still strikes Bulma as odd that this is her life.  Her, her baby, and her boyfriend.  Growing up, she never saw herself as a mother.  Seeing Mai only reminds her of how she was in college: horrifically driven and determined, but still seen as a flighty space cadet by her older classmates.  Now here she is with a PhD, a baby, and a grouchy boyfriend who writes songs about her.

“Get in line,” he says, unwrapping his sandwich.  He flicks his eyes up and adds, “This is my second sandwich.”

Of course it is.  Bulma laughs and goes to get up.

“Alright, alright.”

“Oh and--you totally fucked with your friend just now, didn’t you?”

She pauses, her hand resting on the table to hoist herself up.

“You noticed?”

“I could  _ hear _ her.  She wasn’t whispering.” He rolls his eyes. “I hate this ‘being famous’ shit.”

Bulma cocks her head to the side.

“Do you?”

Vegeta screws his mouth up and then shakes his head.

“No.  It’s pretty great.”

She smirks as she queues up at the end of the line.

“Thought so.”

\--

When he was little, his mother would always talk about how he was two months premature.  She would say that was why he was so small, even though she’d giggle after and say, “I had something to do with that, too.”  She would also say how scared she was because they wouldn’t let her see him right away and how good it was to finally hold him.  How small he was, how fragile, “like you might break.”  He remembers every time she would tell him that because it’s one of his good memories of her.  When he was her little boy, her little prince.  Before everything got bad.

On his last Christmas with his mother, he was ten.  By the next year, she had killed herself and they were going broke and the heat in the house had been broken, but the year he was ten was a good year.  His mom got him a denim jacket that was comically oversized but she said he’d grow into it.  He figures he has.  It’s been with him for the past fifteen years, anyway.  He’s never told anyone that it was a gift from his mom.  It’s too much and still too hard to talk about her.

His jacket is especially serving him well today against the cold.  He has to layer up but it’s not like he’s ever owned a proper winter jacket.  He really ought to since before his current apartment, he lived in that poorly heated shithole with the others and before that, his house was constantly drafty and cold, like a crypt.  He flips the collar of his jacket up and turns the corner.

Night is falling, it’s getting colder, and, by all logic, he should be on his way home.

By all logic.

The mind rarely follows that, though, doesn’t it?  Story of his fucking life.  Ever since he was little, his father told him that he was just like his mother.  Broken, fundamentally.  And maybe he’s right.  He finally has a family, he’s finally happy but.  It isn’t enough.  He still feels the gnawing on the edges of his mind.  He isn’t dumb enough to think that he would just  _ stop _ being bipolar after he and Bulma got back together but it’s incredibly troubling that he’s the happiest he’s ever been and he’s still miserable.

There’s the beckoning light of a bodega at the end of the street, right on the corner, and it doesn’t escape his notice that it’s the one he got fired from what feels like eons ago.  Even so, it’s a place to go so he opens the door.  Vegeta isn’t sure why he’s freaking out  _ this badly. _  Lunch was good, he has a good life and they’re waiting for him back home.

He pushes the door open and is greeted with a blast of heat from a plugged in space heater at the door.

“Heyy, Surly!”

The woman who owns the bodega smiles at him warmly, which is in direct contrast to when she fired him for his shitty attitude over a year ago.

“Hey,” he says.  He slowly peels his gloves off and stuffs them in his jacket pocket.

“Weird you’re famous now,” she says. “But, hey, now I get to say I fired the singer from Apetail.”

She smiles and he gives her a fair approximation of one in return.  He doesn’t know what he wants but the lights and music playing on the plugged in boombox are distracting enough.  He walks through the racks of brightly colored chip bags and wonders when the fuck they came out with salsa verde Doritos and if they’re worth trying.

“Geta?”

He lets his head fall back and turns to look at Kakarrot.  In the fluorescent lights, he looks a bit strange, almost alien, but that may be because most of his unruly hair is tucked under a knit hat.  In winterwear, he and Vegeta look like they’re wearing some kind of uniform with all of their layers.  Kakarrot even has a denim jacket on, even though his is substantially less beaten up and covered in horror movie pins and patches.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing out?” he asks.

“What about you?” he shoots back because it’s easier than answering.  Kakarrot’s his best friend but he doesn’t want to share the thoughts going through his head with  _ anyone. _

Kakarrot shrugs his shoulders, which is all he can do considering how weighed down his arms are with different items.

“Chi-Chi isn’t feeling good so I went to get her medicine and then I also wanted snacks.” He cocks his head to the side in that inquisitive puppy way of his. “Why are you here?”

“I want a drink,” he says sourly.

“Really?” Kakarrot quirks a brow. “Are you okay?”

Sometimes he hates how well he knows him, how  _ long _ their friendship is.

“Do you want me to answer that?”

He turns and walks towards the coolers in the back.  He knows Kakarrot’s following him without having to look.

“Do you think this fancy, rebranded 4loko shit is actually any good?” he asks, tapping on the glass. “‘Bartender Series.’  How fucking pretentious, right?”

Kakarrot leans against the cooler and fixes him with a look.

“Don’t give me that look,” he says icily. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Look, I’m not one to, like, talk when it comes to brain crap but you know you  _ can _ talk to me, right?”

“I don’t want to because there’s nothing to talk about.”

Kakarrot shifts his load of items in his arms, visibly not convinced.  Vegeta’s hand flexes on the handle for the cold case and he clenches his jaw.

“You wouldn’t get it.” He’s speaking to a can of Colt 45, but he can see the ghost of Kakarrot’s reflection in the glass.

“Try me.”

The thing is, though, is that he can’t put it into words.  Not wholly.  He feels like he’s on the edge of a breakdown.  He’s going to lose it and he’ll lose Bulma and Trunks and then he’ll have nothing  _ left _ to lose.  It’s one thing having nothing and knowing he’s fucked but it not affecting anything, really.  There were his friends who knew it and his father who berated him for it.  Now he has everything to lose.  Vegeta makes a noise and looks away.

“Okay, I get it.”

Maybe he does.  The five of them are that close, aren’t they?  They’ve been up each other’s asses for so long that that’s bound to be the case.

“Hey.  Look, I know you’ve never been actively like.” Kakarrot swallows and shoots his eyes towards the ceiling before landing back on him.  His fingers tap on a bag of chips in his arms and the sound of the wrapper crinkles over the top 40 song playing on the boombox. “You know.  Like her.  But you’ve been a lot less...that.  Y’know, self-destructive.  And I think it scares you.  You’re waiting for the other poop to drop.”

“It’s ‘shoe,’ asshole,” he says because it’s easier than saying Kakarrot is right.

Part of him wants to lash out and say that he’s scared, too.  That he and Chi-Chi getting married and having a second kid and all of that doesn’t change the fact that he’s afraid he’ll fuck it up again and she’ll dump him  _ again. _  He doesn’t know what it would accomplish, though, and Kakarrot will just smile and say “Hell yeah I’m terrified” and that will be that.

Maybe he needs more friends who don’t know him inside and out.

And less friends that  _ he _ knows inside and out.

“Right.  Shoe.” He gives a slight smile. “Go home, Geta.”

Kakarrot turns and starts towards the counter with his various purchases.  Halfway there, he pauses and turns.

“Oh, and the Bartender Series with the owl on the can is pretty good if you like grape.”

\--

“Trunks, it’s time for bed.”

He glares at her and looks as intimidating as a two-year-old in footie pajamas who smells freshly like his lavender-scented bath water possibly can.

“No.  Want daddy.”

Bulma sighs and slumps to the ground.

“Daddy isn’t home.”

“Where daddy?” he demands angrily.

She wipes a weary hand over her face.

“I don’t know, baby.”

She thinks that this was bound to happen.  Things have been going well.  Maybe things have been going  _ too  _ well.  He’s back from tour and off for the entire month.  Lunch today, too, seemed so good, so  _ normal. _  But, neither of them are normal.  Sometimes she thinks of them as two fucked up people and what good are they to each other except for fucking each other up more?  She thought that a lot during the time that they were broken up.  While she watched their son grow inside her and thought about what could have been if he hadn’t left for that tour or they had spoken after their big fight.

She used to think that didn’t matter anymore because they’re together but reconciling, admitting their feelings and  _ being together _ doesn’t make up for the fact that they’re both still fucked up.  Over time, Vegeta’s told her more about his family and his shit but not everything.  She doesn’t force it, doesn’t  _ want _ to force it, but she worries about him.

“How about this,” she says to Trunks because she has papers to grade and she is not in the mood. “You go to bed and when you wake up, daddy will be home.”

_ Hopefully… _

“No.  Want daddy,” he says resolutely.

She pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Okay, I know I worded it like a suggestion but it wasn’t.  You’re two and this isn’t a democracy, this is a bulmacracy so you’re going to bed.”

She scoops him up and, immediately, Trunks starts whining and kicking.

“Daddy will be home tomorrow,” she promises. “Now get in bed.”

She’s glad that Trunks, while chunky, is still relatively small for his age so she can keep him in a crib.  She can only imagine the fight if she had already upgraded him to a toddler bed.

With a sigh of relief, she shuts the door.  She knows that Trunks’s whining will soon subside and he’ll drift to sleep.  Usually the second she drapes his favorite blanket over him, he immediately drops off.  Bulma walks back towards the living room where a stack of physics papers await her.  The university will fund her research without her having to use her family’s money so long as she teaches a few classes.  It’s tedious, but worth it if she can do her own thing.  Not that she knows what that thing is.  She’s always been driven--called gifted, a prodigy, a genius--but now that she has a PhD, now that she’s  _ Dr. _ Briefs, she has no idea what to do with herself.

She’s just settling on the couch with her red pen and a stack of tests when the door opens.  Bulma looks up even though she can already guess who it is.  No one else has a key to their place, after all.

“There you are.”

Vegeta shrugs and pulls his knit hat off.  Immediately, his hair sticks back up.  Despite herself, Bulma snickers.  She waits for him to hang his scarf up along with the hat and he strips his denim jacket off long enough to put the sweatshirt jacket he’s wearing beneath it up on the coatrack.  He slides the jacket back on.  She’d never say it, but she secretly calls that jacket his security blanket.  It’s very old, very worn, and covered in its fair share of stains but he refuses to part with it.

“Hey,” she says, more impatiently again.

“Hey,” he says back--no, more like grunts back.

Bulma frowns.  That won’t do.  She knocks gently on the side of his head.

“You okay?”

He reaches up and loosely takes her wrist to pull it away from his head.  They look at one another for a long moment and she knows something is happening--she just can’t wholly name what it is.

“Trunks wanted to wait up for you,” she says. “I put him to bed since I didn’t know when you’d be home.”

He nods and she studies his eyes.  When she first met him in that crappy, poorly lit deli, she thought they were black but.  They’re a charcoal color, even gray in certain lighting.

“I had to go for a walk,” he says, voice low.  His words are deliberate, carefully chosen.  She wonders why.

“You okay?” she repeats.

He lets out a breathy sound that’s almost a laugh.

“No.”

“Okay.”

It is and isn’t as simple as that.  She  _ gets it, _ has experienced shades of it herself, so she doesn’t push it.  Instead, she pulls her hand easily from his hold and places both of her hands on his shoulders.

“You know you’re stuck with us, right?”

He cocks a brow. “Am I?”

“Yep.  It’s a blood pact.”

“I don’t remember making a blood pact.”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head to get her overgrown bangs away from her eyes.

“Okay, so we exchanged  _ other _ kinds of fluids.  It still counts.”

It’s flippant but she knows it’s what he needs to hear.  It’s something that’s plagued him his whole life.  What he’s told her about his mother, about his own misfiring of synapses--that, at least, she can relate to--and why his father  _ still _ hasn’t met Trunks yet.  Bulma kisses him gently and he cups her face with both hands.  His face is still cold and she kisses the warmth back into it.  When she’s nearly breathless from kissing, she pulls back.

“Let’s go to bed, okay?”

She figures that, for now, it’s better than words while they undress each other and fall onto the bed.  They aren’t perfect and maybe they are a bit of a disaster together but they’re a disaster that  _ works. _  Bulma has no idea how they work but they do.  She’s glad for it.  She’s glad she listened to Mai’s suggestion and go see that local punk band.  She’s glad she took him home and teased him about his nipple rings.  Maybe she’s even glad of their long-ass break.  They’re together now, honest and good and.  It isn’t perfect.  She’s grown up beyond ideals of perfect romance and happily ever afters.  That, at least, she’s known since her first boyfriend disappeared from the city and her life when she was sixteen.

They make love under the sheets because their apartment doesn’t think it’s cold enough to kick on the heat yet and she has to cover his mouth as he comes because he always screams too loud.  More than once, their neighbors below have banged on their ceiling with a broom.

“Doing better, your highness?” she asks and curls her finger over his cheekbone.

“Yeah,” he says and then he smiles, a real smile, and she forgets how  _ cute _ he is when he actually does that--not that she’d say so.  He’d hate to be called cute.

When they’re done, Bulma goes to use the bathroom and change back into her pajamas before coming back to crawl into bed.  The papers can wait, she decides.  She pulls his arms around her and settles her back against his torso.  She spots the sleeve of his jacket on the floor by her sweatpants.

“How long have you had that jacket?” she asks.

Vegeta shifts and she can  _ feel _ him schooling his features into a scowl.

“Fifteen years,” he says.  There’s a pause and then, “My mom got it for me.”

She gets the implication, acknowledges the admission.  She lifts his right hand to her lips and kisses the faded scars on his knuckles.  Bulma closes her eyes and is content to let sleep take her when their bedroom door opens.  She doesn’t see anything at first until there’s a little face at the side of the bed.

“Daddy!”

Trunks starts tugging on the sheets and trying to pull himself up.  Bulma sits up, surprised.

“Trunks!” she cries, surprised. “How did you get out of your crib?”

Trunks is still struggling to get on the bed and she decides to have mercy on him and pulls him up onto the bed.  He thanks her by clamoring over her to throw himself over Vegeta, who looks equally surprised.

“How did you get out of your crib?” she repeats.

Trunks beams and says, “I smart.”

That isn’t an answer but she has to laugh.

“Do you want to sleep in here tonight, baby?”

He nods and buries his face in the curve of Vegeta’s neck.

**Author's Note:**

> [AU timeline](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)  
>  http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


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